伊朗教进化论:
In the science textbook for 8th grade,the final year of compulsory education,the topic of evolution appears alongside geology (Amani2008).The chapter opens with fossils and a review of the history of life, with a clearly illustrated geologic time diagram (31).The page following the diagram is adorned with fossil images, most strikingly a specimen of Archaeopteryx with the caption “This is the first bird on earth, which also has some reptile traits”(32). The next five pagesare devoted to a brief introduction to “The Evolution of Organisms” in which the tracing of morphological changes in evolutionary lineages is declared “[o]ne of the most important applications of fossils”(33). In contrast to 10th-gradeSaudi students, who are taught that adaptations are the God-given attributes of created kinds, Iranian eighth-graders are taught about adaptations in the context of mutations and natural selection, exemplified by the following: New traits arising by a mutation are mostly harmful and detrimental to life,[but] some-times in a rare mutation useful traits also appear. An organism possessing one or more useful traits appears, finds greater compatibility with the environment compared to its conspecifics, and gradually the number of [organisms with those traits] increases in the environment.(35)